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Effects of expanding electric vehicle charging stations in California on the housing market

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Abstract

Vehicle electrification is critical to enabling countries to develop more sustainably. Wider electric vehicle (EV) adoption relies on the deployment of EV charging stations (EVCSs). However, the local benefits associated with offering more charging opportunities to nearby residents remain unexplored. Here we provide empirical evidence on the impacts of proximate EVCSs on housing prices in California. We apply a hedonic property value approach using the EVCS data combined with about 14 million housing transaction records during 1993–2021. Our results show that access to charging infrastructure can be capitalized into property values. The average price premium for houses with EVCSs within 1 km is about 3.3% (or US$17,212) compared with homes without proximate EVCSs. The largest effect is a 5.8% increase for houses with EVCSs within 0.4–0.5 km compared with houses without proximate EVCSs. We find different results across neighbourhoods with diverse socio-demographic characteristics. Proximity to EVCSs increases traffic flows by 0.3–0.5% and lowers particulate matter (PM2.5) emissions level by 1.3–2.2%. The increased property value after EVCS installation can incentivize the private real estate sector to expand the availability of charging services. More information on the housing price premium should be provided to facilitate the deployment of this sustainable infrastructure.

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Fig. 1: Distribution of EVCSs in California.
Fig. 2: Impacts of vicinity to EVCSs on housing prices.
Fig. 3: Heterogeneity of the price premium.
Fig. 4: Impacts of proximity to EVCS on housing prices, adding business pattern as a control variable.

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Data availability

Property transaction data were obtained from Zillow through the Zillow Transaction and Assessment Database (ZTRAX). We are restricted by a non-disclosure agreement and cannot share the Zillow data publicly, but information about the accessibility of this database can be found at https://www.zillow.com/research/ztrax/. While new applications are not accepted due to Zillow access policy change, aggregating data from other entities may produce similar transaction data. Other data used for this study are all retrieved from publicly available sources and the sources for each variable can be found in the Data section in Methods. The final compiled datasets (excluding the data from Zillow) and source data can be found on GitHub at https://github.com/jingliang727/evcs_housing_2022.

Code availability

All data processing and analysis were conducted in Stata (15.1) and R (4.1.2). The custom code is available on GitHub at https://github.com/jingliang727/evcs_housing_2022.

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Acknowledgements

Funding for this research was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and Princeton University. We thank the conference participants at AERE and NAREA for their comments and suggestions. The results and conclusions are those of the authors and do not reflect the opinions of the Zillow Group.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA

    Jing Liang & Denise L. Mauzerall

  2. School of Public Policy, University of Maryland College Park, College Park, MD, USA

    Yueming (Lucy) Qiu

  3. Department of Environmental and Natural Resource Economics, College of the Environment and Life Sciences, University of Rhode Island, Kingston, RI, USA

    Pengfei Liu

  4. School of Earth and Ocean Sciences, Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK

    Pan He

  5. Civil and Environmental Engineering Department, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA

    Denise L. Mauzerall

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Contributions

J.L., Y.Q. and P.L. conceived and designed the paper, and planned the analysis. J.L. conducted the analysis and drafted the paper. Y.Q., P.L., P.H. and D.M. offered revision comments and edited the paper.

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Correspondence to Jing Liang or Yueming (Lucy) Qiu.

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Nature Sustainability thanks Martijn I Dröes, Franz Fuerst and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Liang, J., Qiu, Y.(., Liu, P. et al. Effects of expanding electric vehicle charging stations in California on the housing market. Nat Sustain 6, 549–558 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-022-01058-5

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